November 01, 2009

My comments will be
mostly connected to Tom’s third question, relating to the future,[1] and I would like to start by
responding to Salil Mehra.[2]I generally agree that there is an excessive focus on replicable “tools”
and “best practices” in Law and Development studies, but I think there are a
lot of questions to be asked regarding Mehra’s suggestion that the way forward
involves addressing embedded cultural practices and institutions. In fact, there are currently a number of
scholars (myself included) emphasizing the importance of looking at the
interaction between so-called informal institutions (such as cultural practices,
social norms, and historically entrenched attitudes and values).The problem is that although most of these
analyses are very helpful in understanding what went wrong and why the “toolkit”
did not work in a given context, they do not tell us how to improve our efforts
going forward.So, like the “blueprint”
Law and Development scholars, the “context matters” Law and Development
scholars are not helping the field move forward.